Summary
- Mary J. Blige & Cameron Britton excel as Cha Cha & Hazel, Blige from music to acting.
- Kate Walsh impresses in a different role as The Handler in a controlling yet odd character portrayal.
- Megan Mullally & Nick Offerman shine as the malevolent couple Jean & Gene, despite Season 4 flaws.
The Umbrella Academy is about a dysfunctional family. A superpowered dysfunctional family that causes a lot of apocalypses — one per season, in fact. The series also features a lot of guest stars, some of whom are famous faces. It’s these individuals we’re talking about here. In the first season, there were Mary J. Blige and Cameron Britton as assassins Cha Cha and Hazel. Starting in Episode 5 of Season 1, but especially in Season 2, there was Kate Walsh as The Handler, who controlled the lives of people like Cha Cha and Hazel. And in Season 4, there was David Cross as Sy Grossman, the dry cleaner who enlisted the Umbrella Academy to find his daughter, Jennifer.
But the best guest stars of all are Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman as Drs. Jean and Gene Thibodeau, an amusing, but worrisome, couple who will do anything to meet their goals. The only problem is they’re in the fourth season, which is the last — and worst — season of the show. In the following article, we’ll take a look at all the guest stars in The Umbrella Academy and elaborate on why Mullally and Offerman are the best ones despite being in the worst season.
Guest Stars in Seasons 1 Through 3
Cha Cha and Hazel
Cha Cha and Hazel are a pair of assassins for the Commission, the agency whose goal is to preserve the timeline through the removal of people who alter time. Their latest target is Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), a member of the Umbrella Academy who worked as an assassin for the Commission, but ended up breaking his contract and escaping. Cha Cha and Hazel were dispatched to destroy the threat.
Mary J. Blige and Cameron Britton are great as Cha Cha and Hazel, especially Britton as the assassin who is eventually reformed through love. Britton, while lesser-known, has done great work. In particular, his role as Edmund Kemper in Mindhunter is chilling yet empathetic. While Blige has been known for her music for decades, more recently, she has taken up acting. The Umbrella Academy was her first major role after her Academy Award-nominated turn in Mudbound. She’s been acting ever since.
The Handler
The Handler is a higher-up at the Commission who hands out missions to people like Cha Cha, Hazel, and Five. In the second season, she has Five take out the Board and takes over leadership of the Commission. She eventually gets her comeuppance when she tries to take out the Umbrella Academy, but she still manages to wreak a lot of havoc in two seasons.
Kate Walsh is best known for her role as Dr. Addison Montgomery on Grey’s Anatomy and its spin-off Private Practice, which makes her excellent, and very different, work as the Handler even more impressive. While she isn’t exactly a likable character in The Umbrella Academy, she does a fantastic job of playing an odd yet in-control woman who eventually reaches a little too high.
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Guest Stars in Season 4
Sy Grossman
At the beginning of the fourth season, the Umbrella Academy (and everyone else) have been in their current timeline for six years — and no one has their powers. But then Sy Grossman (badly) kidnaps Viktor (Elliot Page), a member of the Umbrella Academy, and holds him for ransom to get the gang back together again. He does this so he can ask them to find his missing daughter, and he happens to have a box of her things, which includes a bottle of Marigold. When the Umbrella Academy finds Jennifer, they discover she, in fact, is not Sy’s daughter, but Sy keeps showing up at key points in the season to make sure she and Ben get together.
David Cross is perhaps best known for playing Tobias Fünke, the meek (and very weird) husband of Lindsay Bluth on Arrested Development. Since then, he hasn’t had a lot of consistent roles on other shows. Instead, he takes a lot of guest-starring roles, and he’s great in all of them. Sy is no different. Cross is wonderful as a man who’s not really who he says he is, but still manages to make everyone around him do his bidding, even when they’re suspicious of him.
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Drs. Jean and Gene Thibodeau
As great as everyone else is, Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, as Jean and Gene Thibodeau, outshine all of the other famous guest stars that have been on The Umbrella Academy. The reason for this is simple: Jean and Gene are a married couple that finishes each other’s sentences, something Mullally and Offerman understand because they’re a married couple themselves.
Of course, we hope the actors aren’t like their characters in any other way. Jean and Gene are cheerful but malevolent, and their malevolent side always wins out. In the six episodes they’re in, they kill the man who brings them artifacts from other timelines, violently take Jennifer from the Umbrella Academy, and then terrify her with the giant squid she was trapped in as a child. Oh, and they get the only dance in Season 4.
Mullally and Offerman are brilliant as individuals. Mullally is best known for her work as Karen Walker on Will & Grace and Offerman is best known for his work as Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation. But they’ve both had many other roles, and they both have Emmy Awards. But as a couple, they really shine. If only they had been on a better season, because, as things stand, their roles ultimately don’t amount to all that much. Even when Jean and Gene summon all their followers in the final episode and get them to guard the store where Ben and Jennifer are holed up with guns and knives, it’s an empty gesture. After all, Ben and Jennifer are going to bring about the Cleanse whether those people are there or not.
So, while Mullally and Offerman’s work is brilliant, the fourth and final season is not, and that makes all the difference. Unfortunately, the season is a mess and has so many plot holes, it’s ridiculous. Plus, fans aren’t happy about Jean and Gene getting the only dance in Season 4. None of this is Mullally and Offerman’s fault, of course, but the fact that this is the season they appear in is a shame. With so much wrong with the fourth season, it makes it difficult to appreciate what went right, including their portrayals of Jean and Gene.
